VIRAMGAM (GUJARAT), OCT 28: It might not have created as much of a scare as the dinosaurs in Spielberg's Jurassic Park, but a scaly, brown pangolin first sighted by a watchman of Viramgam Post and Telegraph Office left Viramgam aflutter on Friday afternoon.The watchman felt the creature looked like a dinosaur he had seen in books and movies. So, even as the four-feet, harmless ant-eating pangolin crept under a truck, the man screamed for help. Within seconds, a crowd assembled, pelting the pangolin with stones and poking it with sticks. The animal, which is a rare species and listed under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, was injured in the melee.Huge crowds kept coming to have a look at the ``dinosaur'' till it was taken away by Forest Department officials. It was later released in a forest area somewhere between Kheda and Vasad.However, many people of Viramgam who saw the animal yesterday still believe that it had been a dinosaur. But why mock them? Viramgam town police station Inspector J.M. Desai and other officials who caught the pangolin too remained convinced, even after a long discussion with Range Forest Officer S.N. Joshi, that they had just done the impossible.Speaking to mediapersons on Friday afternoon, Desai said his act of catching the ``deadly animal was an example of bravery''. ``I have brought this deadly animal from Viramgam Post and Telegraph Office. When I asked local people to help me, everyone refused as this baby dinosaur could harm them.'' The same sentiment was voiced by two other officials, who helped the Inspector and Forest Department officials catch the animal.Long after the pangolin was released, most residents could not accept that the pangolin had not been a baby dinosaur. Several have even sought snaps of the animal from a local photographer, Ratan Chavda, who runs Friends Studio. ``I expect to sell as many as 100 photographs and have already started making prints,'' a beaming Chavda said.
